New TV Sound

Earlier this month we finally bought the new TV that we had been needing for many months which I wrote about here. For the past month we have been using our new TV with the speakers that were built into the set. It has been OK but we really needed to upgrade the sound. I've been looking at some options online including soundbars. Our existing sound system which was an analog home theater setup was not working with our new television. The equipment was incompatible. We needed something else that would work with our new smart TV.

On Christmas Day at Sean and Ashley's house I opened a Christmas present from them that contained a Samsung Soundbar and Subwoofer set. We drove home from our visit with them on the Monday after Christmas and on Wednesday I spent a couple of hours setting up the new sound system. 

First I had to dismantle the existing system which we had for about ten years. Dave had installed it for us as a Christmas present that included a audio/video receiver, a couple of sets of speakers and a subwoofer. It never really worked well for us and one of the sets of speakers and the subwoofer were never really used. It was just too much trouble to get them working correctly and we never felt we needed them. We seldom wanted to watch some big surround sound action movie. The two stereo speakers on either side of the room plus the speaker below the TV worked fine for us.

Another issue we had with this existing sound system was the need to make significant changes to the settings when we wanted to play music in the living room on those speakers. We had to turn off the TV sound, manually change the input on the receiver from video to aux, then turn the volume down a lot on the receiver or the music from the stereo in the other room would blast very loud in the living room. None of this could be done using a remote. 

So the first thing I did when setting up the new system was to pull out all of the existing equipment. I disconnected everything from the receiver and removed it from the TV stand. I disconnected all of the speaker wires and fished them down through the floor into the basement. In the living room near the fireplace I created a pile of speakers that included the two on either side of the couch, the two on either side of the TV stand, the receiver and small soundbar. I kept the subwoofer next to the couch for the time being because Becky uses it as a table for her coffee cup. It will go when she gets a new table for that spot.

Then I unpacked the new soundbar and subwoofer and installed them after cleaning the TV stand. It took some time to get it all connected and I was surprised I needed the speaker remote to make everything work together. The subwoofer only connected to the TV using Bluetooth. The soundbar used a cable.  When everything was working I tested the speakers using a YouTube concert video and I was shocked at how much better the TV sound was coming from the new speaker system. I was very happy and Becky was too when she came home from the studio and she gave the system a listen.

The next thing we need to do now is to upgrade our stereo system with a new receiver that has Bluetooth capability because we want to have speakers in the living room that are not connected with wires going through the floor and running along the ceiling in the basement. I'm so done with all that.